Friday, March 26, 2010

Stalking an elusive thief

Researchers advance HIV/AIDS vaccine -- Bette Korber, one of Los Alamos National Laboratory's best-known researchers, has been stalking HIV for more than 15 years and is about to carry her ideas forward into a human trial. "It's been under negotiations for a while and the Gates Foundation and National Institutes of Health are funding it," she said in a recent interview. (whole story)

Also in the Monitor this week:

Sandra Zerkle earns Student of the Month

Zerkle has worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Ecology and Air Quality Group at Rebound Physical Therapy and at Dr. McDonald's dental office in Los Alamos. She plans to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Division this summer. (whole story)

Congress Hears Call for Manufacturing Innovation

According to Len Sauers, vice president at Procter & Gamble, government has a critical place at the table in helping to spawn manufacturing innovation. He called for more partnerships with national labs, such as one Procter & Gamble helped develop at Los Alamos, N.M., which has been used to develop innovative approaches to manufacturing processes. (whole story)

Another Good Reason Not to Shoot Nukes at Asteroids

Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have simulated the nuke versus asteroid scenario and demonstrated that if the explosion of an interceptor nuke was too small, the asteroid will reform under its mutual gravity much faster than expected. (whole story)

Safer nuclear power could be a step closer after researchers discovered a phenomenon which allows tiny materials to repair themselves after suffering radiation damage in reactors. Computer simulations carried by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, U.S., discovered the 'loading-unloading' effect in the interface between single nano-sized particles - known as grains. (whole story)

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Friday, March 19, 2010

Hunt for the sterile neutrino heats up

Data collected from 1993 to 1998 by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector at LANL’s LANSCE facility was the first evidence for neutrino mass. LANL photo.

"The question of sterile neutrinos is absolutely crucial for nuclear particle physics and astrophysics," says William Louis of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who worked on a ground-based experiment in the mid-1990s that provided one of the first hints of sterile neutrinos. (Full Story)

Quantum weirdness: A scanning electron microscope image of the resonator.Image from Nature.

Researchers have demonstrated a device that can pick up single quanta of mechanical vibration similar to those that shake molecules during chemical reactions, and have shown that the device itself, which is the width of a hair, acts as if it exists in two places at once - a "quantum weirdness" feat that so far had only been observed at the scale of molecules.

"This is a milestone," says Wojciech Zurek, a theorist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "It confirms what many of us believe, but some continue to resist—that our universe is 'quantum to the core'." (Full Story)

Biofuels Summit To Explore Latest Research

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has been invited to open the Summit with a keynote address. Other participants include top scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Laboratories and, legislative schedules permitting, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Sen. Tom Udall, Rep. Martin Heinrich, Rep. Harry Teague and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan. (Full Story)

HIV vaccine strategy expands immune responses

Two teams of researchers - including Los Alamos National Laboratory theoretical biologists Bette Korber, Will Fischer, Sydeaka Watson, and James Szinger - have announced an HIV vaccination strategy that has been shown to expand the breadth and depth of immune responses in rhesus monkeys. Rhesus monkeys provide the best animal model currently available for testing HIV vaccines. (Full Story)

Nuclear Review Nears Completion

The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review will be presented to Congress within a month, James N. Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on strategic forces.

Budget submissions for added infrastructure investment, such as a nuclear facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory, also were determined based on the review. The Defense Department also requested a 13-percent increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration. (Full Story)

ARSEC Environmental Wins Los Alamos SM-43 D&D Contract

Construction of the TA-3 SM-43 administration building began in 1955. LANL photo.ARSEC Environmental, LLC was recently awarded a contract by Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), for the demolition of the SM-43 Administration Building at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The project is scheduled to begin in April 2010 and is valued at approximately $6 million. (Full Story)

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Friday, March 12, 2010

LANL's mosaic vaccine makes immune cells

The quest for an effective HIV vaccine has foiled scientists for years, in part because the virus comes in many ever-changing forms. One solution may be to design a vaccine that produces sophisticated immune cells that can recognize many kinds of viruses. (Full story)

Japan, New Mexico collaborate on smart grid tech

Two national laboratories, the state of New Mexico and a Japanese agency are developing smart grid technology to give homeowners and businesses more access to renewable energy sources by controlling the supply and demand of electric power. (Full story)

Also from the Associated Press this week:

Los Alamos lab awards $100 million contract

Los Alamos National Laboratory has chosen a Texas-based small business to do up to $100 million in waste transportation and disposal work. (Full story)

Smart grid effort

The Japanese government has launched a four-year, $30-million research program in New Mexico to demonstrate green grid technology. A large share of the work will be done in Los Alamos, involving both county utilities and Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Full story)

Also from the Monitor this week:

Light on the landfill: Metal recycling gathers rewards

"Recycling metal from a demolition project reduces costs and cuts the amount of waste that goes to a landfill," said Al Chaloupka, LANL's demolition program director in a press release Tuesday. "We put a lot of effort into getting metal separated from the debris and making sure it isn't contaminated so it can be recycled." (Full story)

LANL awards $100M waste-disposal contract

Los Alamos National Laboratory awarded a $100 million contract to TerranearPMC LLC to haul and dispose of waste produced by stimulus-funded cleanup work. LANL received federal money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to demolish and remove Cold War-era buildings in Technical Area 21. (Full story)

Also from the New Mexico Business Weekly

Simtable, SW Bio Fuels win LANL funds

Los Alamos National Laboratory selected two companies, Simtable and Southwest Bio Fuels, as awardees for $100,000 grants from the lab's Venture Acceleration Fund. The fund provides seed money to help northern New Mexico businesses with connections to LANL technology or expertise to further develop their products or services for commercialization. (Full story)

"Modular reactors" for energy attract interest

One idea is to create enclosed, small "modular reactors," like the one developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory and now proffered by Santa Fe, N.M.'s Hyperion Power. Its $50-million product would be an enclosed reactor roughly 1.5 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall; generating 25 megawatts, it would be buried underground and good for at least seven years. (Full story)

Ballard to receive DOE funding to advance non-automotive fuel cell

Ballard Power Systems announced today that it has $6.2 million in project funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under contract over a four year period. "We are excited to be working with a technology leader such as Ballard Power Systems," said Dr. Rod Borup, Fuel Cell Program Manager, Institute for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of Ballard's project partners. (Full story)

Optimization - with a click

Dynadec is currently working with Los Alamos National Laboratory to maximize efficiency in emergency response to hurricanes. While Los Alamos provides possible scenarios and effects on infrastructure, Comet can help determine where to place resources such as water and medical supplies in order to respond as quickly as possible. (Full Story)

'Terminator' asteroids could re-form after nuke

The regenerating liquid-metal robots in the Terminator movies have a cosmic relation: incoming asteroids that quickly reassemble if blasted by a nuclear bomb. (Full story)

Are our asteroid-destroying nukes big enough?

Pop quiz. An asteroid the size of Manhattan is hurtling towards Earth, its impact is sure to result in mass extinction and the destruction of humanity as we know it. What do you do? (Full story)

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Friday, March 5, 2010

Two teams of researchers -- including Los Alamos National Laboratory theoretical biologists Bette Korber, Will Fischer, Sydeaka Watson, and James Szinger -- have announced an HIV vaccination strategy that has been shown to expand the breadth and depth of immune responses in rhesus monkeys. (Full Story)

They are the cyber defenders of the national labs

LANL's William Rees, Principal Associate Director for Global Security, is interviewed on KOB-TV.

Protecting secrets from prying eyes and hacker attacks almost daily, today they gathered with others from around the country to hone their skills at a hacking showdown. View the video clip here.Additional versions of this story are also available from KOB-TV and KOAT-TV

Keeping bad guys at bay

In one of the side rooms at the conference center at Buffalo Thunder for four days this week, a phalanx of 100 Cyber-security first responders pinned electronic tails on virtual donkeys in a far more serious encounter known as Tracer FIRE 2. (Full Story)

Weapons labs to thrive as Obama trims nukesThe [Nuclear Posture Review] will help to guide work throughout the energy department, including at the primary weapons laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, as the administration works on a new treaty with Russia that could see the weapons stockpile reduced. (Full Story)

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